Hey, at least these two are having fun running in circles!
Indy has met her match pic.twitter.com/2CDNPStVvF
— Ned Pyle (@NerdPyle) July 27, 2019
Elsewhere…
In honor of #Stonewall50, @RepDebHaaland and I teamed up with @NOH8Campaign to stand up against hate and show our support for the full spectrum of the LGBTQ+ and two-spirit community. pic.twitter.com/2bB02hUta7
— Rep. Sharice Davids (@RepDavids) June 28, 2019
Elizabeth Warren wants to break up Google. She's also getting more donations from Google employees than any other Democrat, and Sanders, who is also in favor of break-up, is second.
Turns out a lot of Google employees think a break-up would be just fine: https://t.co/vlDOWdoV22 pic.twitter.com/IelmKUq1X9
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) July 30, 2019
Crucial new finding from Quinnipiac.
Majority favors *releasing* migrants, rather than caging them in bad conditions, *even if* they might not show up for hearings.
Restrictionists say they have the winning side of this argument. Nope.
New piece:https://t.co/hy4uNaPYZp
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) July 30, 2019
?? 10 out of the 40 vulnerable freshmen @HouseDemocrats have now publicly called for an #ImpeachmentInquiry to begin.
They're gonna need LOTS of help next year…show you have their backs by donating today!*
*(you can also donate to the other 30!)https://t.co/w21aAjGiAD
— Charles Gaba (@charles_gaba) July 31, 2019
Steeplejack
Whoa, self-bigfooting. Makes you think.
Steeplejack
Boy, the TV options are really pretty slim at five o’clock in the morning.
Solaris still chugging away on TCM. Or maybe From Russia with Love on Starz. Mike Pence is pretty good in that as the Russian assassin.
ETA: I think Lotte Lenya is why he doesn’t like to be alone with a woman.
JPL
Listening to a clip of Marianne and she reminds me of a snake oil salesman.
OzarkHillbilly
Arrrrggghhh, get out of the garden!! I just mulched all that!!!!
Patricia Kayden
The fact that the majority of Americans are against caging children is refreshing but a pretty low bar. Itâs amazing that Trump still believes that running on hyped up racism is a winning strategy but here we are.
Steeplejack
@JPL:
Boy, nothing gets past you! //
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: Or an Evangelist/Jehovah’s Witness proselytizing on my porch.
mrmoshpotato
@JPL:
But think of all of our auras, and positive, healing, magic rocks!
ETA: Or maybe you’re not pure enough for her cult.
Patricia Kayden
Poor Delaney.
https://twitter.com/AndrewKirell/status/1156391747045511173
Heâs a laughingstock.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
rikyrah
Sending positive thoughts to Little Imma, Scotian, and the rest of the BJ Jackal Family???
mrmoshpotato
@Patricia Kayden:
Very generous of you. I’m ready for at least half of the field to drop out. Eric Swalwell came to his sense, didn’t he?
mrmoshpotato
CNNâs Democratic Debate, Night One: A Closer Look For those interested.
Steeplejack
@rikyrah:
Good morning! ?
OzarkHillbilly
@mrmoshpotato: I was ready for half the field to drop out before they entered, and I’m not even paying attention.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Baud
@Patricia Kayden:
I feel like someone who is polling at 1% dominated the debate time. It was strange.
Baud
One NYT take.
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly: Same here. 10 candidates? F that. 15? WTF? 20? Oh, 15 of you need to fuck off.
Baud
@Baud:
Actually. scanning my news feed, a lot of media have the same take.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Three of those 4 can piss off, and Liz Warren isn’t one of them.
Baud
Honestly, I’d take Delaney over Tim Ryan. That guy just rubs me the wrong way.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Her makeup is a tad to heavy for that role.
OzarkHillbilly
@mrmoshpotato: Call me when it’s down to half a dozen or less. I already know who I like, what I don’t know is what my choices are.
Baud
Putting aside style points, I take it that Warren has gone all in with Bernie’s single plan no-private-insurance plan. Maybe the media take has a point. It’s kind of a do or die position.
JPL
So the NYTimes say the winners are Elizabeth and Pete with Bullock a close second. By tomorrow no one will remember.
Steeplejack
Greeting the dawn: Freddie Hubbard, “Ă BientĂŽt.”
mrmoshpotato
@JPL: Sandra Bullock?
Baud
@JPL:
Yeah, last night’s debate was utterly forgettable.
Baud
@JPL:
I also like that Bulllock beat out Bernie, even if it is the NYT.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: They are all selling snake oil.
Baud
And they hate Obama because they are so committed to Republicans.
JPL
@Baud: Dying to own the libs.
Quinerly
@rikyrah: ????
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Naw, they hate Obama because he tried to give them a higher quality of life by assuring their access to quality health care. In other words, he tried to tell them how to live. Also, Death Panels!!!
Quinerly
@Baud: can’t stand Ryan. I want to back hand him.
Morning Joe just told me Marianne Williamson was the most Googled in 49 states.
Steeplejack
@Quinerly:
That’s the first stage of Marianne Williamson:
Baud
@Quinerly:
She had a good debate.
ETA: It helped that she was one of the few who didn’t yell.
Quinerly
@Steeplejack: we are at the 3.25 stage. “Did you hear about all the great points Morning Joe made about her debate appearance. Sometimes a country just doesn’t need all that wonkiness. Did you hear all the applause?”
OzarkHillbilly
Giving a whole new meaning to the phrase “Stockholm syndrome”.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
See. Williamson would be a step up in the crazy department.
Chyron HR
@Patricia Kayden:
Who?
Quinerly
I totally missed the earlier early AM thread. Perhaps we can take our Marianne discussions there.
Personally, I thought the debate was unwatchable. Too many candidates. People must drop out. It’s ridiculous.
Baud
@Quinerly:
The format didn’t help. It made things too disjointed.
debbie
@Quinerly:
Search terms were “Can this chick be for real?”
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Of course Trump would support a bully caught on tape beating up someone. //
Raven
@Quinerly: like one morning thread is confusing enough.
Quinerly
@Raven: I’m already exhausted. Woke up to Bernie shouting at me.
tokyokie
@Patricia Kayden:
And I thought Tim Conway died a few weeks ago.
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: Frank Bruni phoning one in, I guess. Didn’t want to break a sweat yesterday.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s really something that no one at the NYTimes had conniptions over Donald Trump’s fantasy island tax cuts coupled with the GOP spending. That’s a fantasy. Donald Trump is not paying for current programs and none of them mention it.
The idiot “centrists” on the stage last night were also too stupid to pick that up. If they want to be fiscal conservatives there’s a big, fat target sitting right in front of them and it isn’t their fellow Democrats.
Quinerly
OK. I know some here are anti Book of Faces. But others must check out the “Hogan’s Adventures” page. I so needed it after that debate shit show. Must see one is his post (I think 7/24) about tearing up his bed. I am now hooked. Am I late to this site? Anyone else been following Hogan? I suspect he’s on YouTube also. Hogan may be my spirit animal.
debbie
@Kay:
Isn’t the assumption that they all have the same thoughts on Trump, that what they need to do now is distinguish themselves from each other?
Kay
Pete Buttigieg wanted to run the DNC. I think he’s smart and does a great job arguing against Republicans and I think his not getting that job was a real missed opportunity for Democrats and one we won’t get again.
RedDirtGirl
Regarding the first tweet: I have major yard-envy!
debbie
I prefer Colbert’s debate recap and recap over anything in NYT.
Baud
@Kay:
Agree. He was too unknown for that race, but he would be a great spokesperson for Dems.
Kay
@debbie:
Why is one set of policies derided as “fantasies” and the other not? Why is giving the very wealthiest everything they demand no matter what it does to the budget or the country as a whole not a fantasy? Donald Trump cutting taxes and then not paying for things is a fantasy. Thinking you’re going to have clean air and water after gutting regulation is a fantasy. There has already been air and water quality degradation under Trump, because not regulating and expecting clean air and water is a fairy tale. But, oddly, only “fantasies” that would actually give something to or benefit hundreds of millions of people are sneered at by the columnists and political reporters at the NYTimes. Fantasies that benefit 1/10th of 1% are just ordinary GOP policy.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Because it’s reality?
Sorry Kay, low hanging fruit and all that. I just couldn’t resist.
Quinerly
https://www.texasobserver.org/the-trauma-of-teen-mothers-held-in-border-patrol-lockups/
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Quinerly:
Worst possible alarm selection.
Baud
@Kay:
I actually don’t always disagree with the centrists on substance. But they are kind of doing what I think liberals have traditionally done. They spend their time talking about what’s wrong with the other side rather than explaining why their ideas are the way to go. It’s a position of weakness.
debbie
@Kay:
Like it or not, the GOP’s policies are worse, but they are more effective messengers.
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah. Imagine how many alarm clocks she goes thru in a month.
Quinerly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I blame Alexa. Honestly, I think she’s out to get me.
Kay
There’s a lot of fantasies on the Right. Here’s another one. It’s a fantasy that they are going to ban abortion without regulating and monitoring every single woman of child bearing age in this country. That’s a fantasy. A huge chunk of abortions are medicinal now. They use a prescription drug. So put on your state legislature hat and tell me how they plan to distinguish that from miscarriages. They have to insert the state to a greater or lesser degree into every single pregnancy. There will be an entire section of state code devoted to this- they’ll have to add to it every year- because it’s a massive, radical change to existing law and it’s NEVER been done in the context of a modern US, with modern health care and within the context of current standards of medical interventions in pregnancy care. None of them thought this thru, none of them are telling people anything true about the reality of it, yet no one asks them about it. It isn’t even discussed.
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly: “alarm CLOCKS?”
You must be old.
?
debbie
@Baud:
A well-constructed sentence can do both, but they are almost impossible in a debate format.
Quinerly
Claire really likes Tim Ryan. So did Tweety last night.
Baud
@Quinerly:
Ugh. I kind of had a soft spot for Clare until now. Tweety has always been trash.
OzarkHillbilly
@Quinerly: “It ain’t the years Honey, it’s the mileage.”
Kay
@Baud:
I don’t know how you could have watched that debate and come away with “liberals are only talking about what’s wrong with centrists”. The entire centrist argument was attacking Warren and Bernie. IMO, the centrists haven’t made their case. Delaney had no answer when Warren challenged him on the fact that people who have private health insurance are often not covered to a greater a lesser extent. He ignored it.
satby
@Kay: yes, he’d be head and shoulders over Perez, and I supported Perez in that role. That was before I became familiar with the mayor even though I lived here then.
@rikyrah: Good morning ?
Quinerly
@Baud: Claire has really been bugging me since MSNBC hired her. I’m actually beginning regretting hosting one of her “Cocktails for Claire” get togethers at my home during her first Senate run. She’s a little full of herself since all this NY studio stuff. I thought Tweety was actually rude to Liz last night. She was firm and gracious.
Baud
@Kay:
Huh? I said the exact opposite. Last night, it was the centrists doing what liberals usually do.*
*Not so much candidates in debates, but generally.
Baud
@Quinerly:
Maybe the crowd she’s running with now is affecting her.
Quinerly
@OzarkHillbilly: “built for speed?”
In other news, our Red worked here last night. “Salle Roche’s” kitchen floor rocks!
OzarkHillbilly
I know, you are shocked, shocked I tell you…
And I’m off. Y’all play nice now, ya heah?
Anne Laurie
@Steeplejack:
It’s the OCD. I feel like the Williamson bullshit needs to be on the record, even if only three people ever notice the post…
@JPL:
See my previous post!
Kay
Centrists don’t make their case, or bother to try to get people enthused about their plans, because they believe their policies are the “real” policies, and that belief is validated by every single member of political media. Don’t they have to earn that? At minimum don’t they have to show something that says their policies are even popular? Warren’s busting ass up there selling her stuff and defending her stuff and Delaney just phones it in with some vague handwaving about “covering everyone” and completely ignoring her questions- like about prescription drug prices or insufficient coverage in existing health plans. He doesn’t have to work at all. He just has to punch some hippies, smile smugly, and go home.
Kay
@Baud:
Sorry. You’re right. I read it wrong.
OzarkHillbilly
@Quinerly: Nice.
I’m running a little slow these days. Way past due for a rebuild.
And now I really am off.
Quinerly
@Baud: I’m listening to her on “Tune In MSNBC.” I feel like she’s lecturing me and wagging her finger at me. Time to take your ex running mate to the park. He has a big day tomorrow. Spa Day! Poco be pretty stinky.
zhena gogolia
@Anne Laurie:
But why don’t you front-page any of the good things said by Warren, Buttigieg, even O’Rourke? Aren’t you just promoting her?
Kay
The reason “free trade” became unpopular among a large chunk of the D base was because free traders were so arrogant and so sure of their position and so completely and utterly unaffected by any of the downside that they never bothered to either explain or sell it. It was obvious to anyone who listens to Democrats that “free trade” was being conflated with people losing and losing and losing and about half of that belief was inaccurate but “the centrists” never made the slightest effort to tell them why they were wrong. “NAFTA” became a kind of term of art in Ohio. It means “low wages and not enough work”. You can’t even discuss it with portions of the D base anymore. It STANDS for a whole host of grievances. 5 minutes into the conversation they’re blaming “NAFTA” for things that had nothing to do with NAFTA. That should have alarmed free traders! They should have lowered themselves and actually SOLD their policy to the people it affects. But, being in the privileged “centrist” class no one insisted they sell it. It’s just assumed to be the best.
Dorothy A. Winsor
We have house guests and, after day at the Chicago Botanic Gardens, we didn’t watch the debate. So I’m already having a respite.
The Botanic Gardens were lovely.
Mandalay
NYT pundits give their ratings on Marianne Williamson’s debate performance last night:
They actually get paid for writing this stuff.
Kay
This whole “labor union contracts” thing centrists are doing is dishonest too. I’m not even a supporter of Medicare for All and I know it’s dishonest. Unions negotiated the contracts with health insurance as part of compensation. If health insurance wasn’t part of compensation they would negotiate a new contract where wages would replace health insurance. If there is ANY group of people in the US who actually understand every single piece of their compensation it is labor union members. They understand it much better than people who do not work under a contract. Their contracts look like this- wages, pension/retirement, health insurance. Three pieces. That’s the pay package. If one goes down the other two go up.
Labor union members are actually situated the best to do this- the people the centrists should be worried about are people who don’t negotiate a work contract.
germy
“Saint Ronnie”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/ronald-reagans-racist-conversation-richard-nixon/595102/
Kay
@Mandalay:
I don’t know what to do about them. I’m told they “don’t matter” but they mattered a lot in 2016. I’m told Fox has some small number of viewers compared to the whole and that’s true, but the President hires people who come directly from Fox and models all of US policy on what is said on their ridiculous morning show. Because they matter I would like to do something in response to how fucking horrible they are, but I don’t know what that might be. Which I find very frustrating.
They want a divided Democratic Party. A divided Democratic Party benefits Donald Trump, so I don’t want it. But they own the platforms and they set the debates. They deny they are important while at the same time very clearly steering the debate in ways that can be measured. They’re accountable to no one.
Baud
@Mandalay:
It’s why the Baud! 2020! team isn’t wasting time with the debates and instead is actively searching for the hidden horcruxes.
satby
@Kay:
it goes on in a lot of political debates. We even do it here sometimes. We dismiss the troubles people like the Kentucky coal miners have as “getting what they voted for”, but they were lied to and the Democratic solutions weren’t explained well or attractive to them. Retraining for theoretical jobs is not attractive to a middle aged person with a sub par education (and I was a middle aged person retraining constantly with a decent education and I hated it too). Having to move to a different region of the country away from family and friends for a job…not attractive. We think they should have realized they were being lied to, but it’s a very human failing. I don’t excuse any racism. But desperate people grasp at straws, and one party is using desperation to create fear, incite racism, and hold on to power; and the centrists like Delaney just assume we should all accept their ideas are the best… because he’s privileged.
MomSense
@Baud:
Iâm a news junkie and I had to turn it off. Warren seemed to be channeling Wilmer last night and getting really shouty. Those dead end candidates are making us look bad. The format was horrible. The Daily Show called it 2 fast 2 furious 2 many candidates and that seems right to me.
Wilmer has been pushing his low information bullshit without getting called on it for too long. On any issue where there are multiple approaches, anyone who disagrees with him is castigated as lacking courage or being corrupt. Itâs a dishonest and destructive force in Democratic politics and we better drag him for it while we can.
Kay
@Mandalay:
I was actually hoping that now that the NYTimes have vanquished the last Clinton Maureen Dowd would start working on something other than politics. But no. Instead there’s a whole next generation of people exactly like her behind her. Some of these people are not even old enough to have sneering contempt for Democrats- the only one they lived under as adults was Obama, but they just adopted the whole narrative of those who came before them.
satby
@MomSense:
Yep. Not only Republicans lie to their base. Wilmer does too.
Baud
@satby:
I don’t know, satby. You know who benefitted from trade deals. Farmers. You know who are Trump’s most die hard supporters. Farmers.
If we control the government, I want our people to lift all boats, including the people who hate us. But we must control the government, and anyone who opposes that gets none of my non-existent empathy.
germy
@MomSense: Sanders was correct, though, when he called Jake Tapper’s questions republican talking points.
Baud
@Kay:
This honestly is what pissed me off most about Williamson last night. She jumped on the chastisement bandwagon. So tired.
A Ghost To Most
@satby:
They choose to be wilfully ignorant. They choose to believe the liars. They will ignore or deny any fact that conflicts with their worldview. They are complicit in being marks for the grifters. No sympathy for the wilfully ignorant.
Kay
@satby:
What I have found too in my practice is “retrain” doesn’t recognize the reality of the passage of time. Middle class people don’t have high salaries so they need consistent income over time. Money + time. That’s how they become secure. Telling them to retrain doesn’t factor in that they lose the time spent retraining and they need a ramp-up period of years in the new job before they make the wage they were making prior. They simply run out of time. They can’t get the 5 or 10 years back and they need it. Any discussion of middle class people and their finances needs two parts. It needs to put within a 30 year time span of time to work, because that’s all they have.
The retrainers can’t catch up. I see it all the time. They never get back to where they before the disruption. This is not their fault. They can’t create 10 years out of thin air.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@satby:
Well, that and straight out lies. “I’ll open the coal mines….”.
satby
@Baud: there are plenty of hateful ones who don’t deserve sympathy. And I don’t have any for them.
But there’s a lot of ignorance being manufactured by our disgusting excuse for a news media and the gutting of public education in this country. And we have understand that to fight it.
different-church-lady
@debbie: It’s like the way I use Sound Hound. The algoryhthms probably think I really like auto-tuned pop music, but I’m really just “hate-using” it to try to put an identity on the shitty over-produced artist tormenting me on the coffee shop sound system at that moment.
Another Scott
@Mandalay: And they’ll keep getting paid (probably very handsomely) as long as people keep clicking it and reposting it.
Just sayin’…
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Another Scott:
It’s why I don’t link to the NYT.
Anne Laurie
@zhena gogolia:
It’s way past my bedtime, and this heat has me muzzy. Plan to do the positive posts after I get some sleep!
Searcher
There are a lot of ways breaking up Google could be fairly inconsequential from a product standpoint.
If you break it up into Cloud (owns the data centers), Google (all the search), Ads, YouTube, Apps (GMail, Chrome, Docs, Drive, the 27 chat apps, etc), Android (phones + other consumer hardware), and then maybe a few others for some other crap, you’d probably not see any major difference in products, but you’d slice the company into smaller bits. The biggest headache is you’re looking at is that it’s like a hundred thousand SWE years of development work to break up the source code and make everything work afterwards.
There’s a lot of ways you could break Google up though, so the details really matter. If you go after Universal Search (the way Google shows you maps, images, song lyrics, calculator results, etc, along with the ten blue links), for instance, that makes things a lot harder. Those are in most meaningful ways one thing, internally, using the same code, the same servers, the same databases to work. You have teams that focus on different ones, but you also have teams that work on all of them. A cut across there would be an unimaginable nightmare to rewrite the codebase and still have it sort of work, and the products might not actually be viable afterwards. On the other hand, there’s some people (some companies) who would love for a lot of Universal Search to go away, and for Google to just be 10 blue links again.
So a lot of the question, even to Googlers, depends on what you mean by “break Google up”.
Baud
@Searcher:
You can’t really break up Google without breaking up Apple.
satby
@?BillinGlendaleCA: yes, as I said: they are being lied to by every authoritative voice they hear.
@A Ghost To Most: and yes, some choose to believe the lies because it fits their racist, xenophobic natures. But many never hear contrary views to even choose. I see these people every day. I’m constantly dumbfounded by the vacuum of information they operate in. Imagine if your only sources were Fox, CNN, and your fundie Xtian church. How much would you know was false?
Baud
@satby:
It’s not like there’s some obvious way to reach them that we’re not pursuing. It’s that they’re in so deep that we have to figure out how best to use our limited resources.
Kay
@satby:
The truth is if you want to be financially secure in a working class or lower middle class job you need to consistently bring in X by the time you’re 30 years old and keep doing that each and every year until you’re at least 60. They have very little room for error. They don’t have the luxury of exploring a new option in “coding” or “medical assisting” or whatever the fuck. This whole discussion is based on the options upper middle class people have. The lower wage DICTATES that they need consistent earning over time to amass any assets at all. The higher wage creates the options. Do any of these policy people actually do the math? 30k x 30 at 5% of 6% or 8% rate of gain and NO catastrophes. That’s the recipe. They NEED that. If you make 100k you can go to 30k and still survive at 30k. If you make 30k and go to ZERO you can’t. Cannot. That 60k is the risk – the options- that upper middle class people have that lower middle class people do not have.
Steve in the ATL
@Kay:
@germy:
Things are getting weird here this morning.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Nope, Apple makes the hardware and software.
satby
@Baud: I agree. And the better use of our resources is getting non- and suppressed voters registered and turned out. We need to overwhelm the vote.
Honestly, only after we can take back power can we start to undo the damage that decades of propaganda have wrought. It’s just that as much as I hate the way many of the lost souls vote I can’t always hate all of them. The political liars I hate with the heat of a thousand suns.
A Ghost To Most
@satby:
Another choice. I started out in the same place as my brother and sisters. They chose to let life happen to them. I chose to make my life happen. We are all now living with our choices.
They CHOSE poorly, and they have been blaming us for their choices. Fuck that noise.
satby
@Kay: I know, I lived that life. I fell out of the middle class my parents and grandparents had achieved and never caught back up. As automation eliminates more jobs it will get worse.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@satby:
Baud does.
Kay
@satby:
I just want policy people to recognize this, which I see in my practice. ONE big, bad decision – 1- can make it so working or lower middle class people cannot be secure. No matter how much positive thinking they do or how hard they work. One poorly timed firing or lay off, or divorce, or long illness, or unwise home purchase, or family catastrophe where they care for another family member and they are poor. They don’t have room for risk taking. If they fail they don’t “have a lower standard of living”. They don’t give up a gym membership. They go on food stamps and start looking for section 8 housing. Because going from 100k to 30k is a completely different situation than going from 30k to zero to 15k. That whole group below 50k have a whole different calculation. They cannot tolerate risk. The downside isn’t “uncomfortable”, it’s a catastrophe. Warren gets this. It’s been her whole life’s work.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
When push comes to shove, I think iPhone users will choose their phones over Elizabeth Warren.
But it’s good that we’re talking about competition policy in general.
germy
@Steve in the ATL:
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Yeah, but I was a sociopath well before Trump got elected.
Baud
@germy:
Dante Atkins may or may not be right here, but he’s a lying Wilmerite in general.
different-church-lady
@satby: I have no sympathy for someone who cannot correctly identify and reject hatred when they see it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
Absolutely, cold dead hands and all.
Quinerly
@germy: read that last night. I wasn’t surprised.
MomSense
@germy:
Iâve never liked Jake Tapper. I think Wilmer heard that Warren got a good response when she said that line first to the Lemur dude, so Wilmer used it on Tapper.
zhena gogolia
My trainer said two of her clients got into a screaming fight over Trump the other day. The Trumpanzee claimed to be completely oblivious to what the other woman was saying about how she had to pay MORE taxes this year, not less (this is what gets people going, not kids in cages or Putin running the country).
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I’ve read several times now that Williamson had a good debate. I thought she sounded a raving kook, same as last time. The only difference I noticed is that she had a cheering squad at the venue this time. I’m starting to understand the logic behind laugh tracks.
@Kay: Agreed. I like Perez and was rooting for him to get the job, but he hasn’t done so well, IMO. To be fair, it is a really tough job these days. He ceded too much ground to the Sandernistas, and it turns out that wasn’t strictly necessary.
Another Scott
@Searcher: As long as:
1) Google only makes money on ads (and maybe a few pennies on cloud stuff)
and
2) Only Apple (and maybe Samsung, certainly not LG and Sony and MS and …) are making money on mobile hardware
then breaking up Google won’t work.
It’s easy to say that these “$1T” companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, MS, etc.) need to be broken up, but I think it won’t be easy. How are the smaller pieces supposed to make money and remain an ongoing concern? One really needs to think about the problem we’re trying to solve.
Cambridge Analytica supposedly has (something like) 5000 data points on every voter in the USA. They’re a tiny company but have the potential (and the actuality) to greatly affect our elections. Breaking up Google (and FB and all the rest) won’t lessen CA’s power. The horses are out of the barn…
I haven’t read Warren’s proposal on these breakups. I’m all for much stronger anti-trust enforcement (mobile is mature enough that phones mostly shouldn’t be locked down by Google or anyone else – subject to the concern (of course) that people have to know that their accounts are secure). Maybe she has figured out how to do it, I dunno…
Cheers,
Scott.
Chyron HR
@MomSense:
Bernie did it first! HE WROTE THE
BILLZINGER!Kay
@satby:
There are so many people like you. I don’t care when Republicans ignore it, but Democrats? Get you head out of your ass. Stop selling them policy that will only work for a 25 year old. Stop saying these ridiculous “power of positive thinking” things to people who want security more than “opportunity”.
During the 2012 campaign Arne Duncan (who is a moron- genuinely a dumb individual) traveled to Cleveland to tell machinists who were making 60k a year to be coders. How does he think this works? How do they survive for the years they’re training and earning up in that new field? How do they manage the passage of time? They cannot become 30 years old again. That’s impossible.
rikyrah
@JPL:
that’s cause she IS one.
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: Sanders was peeking at Warren’s homework all night. It was almost comical.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
The only thing she has going for her is that she has a soothing voice and doesn’t shout. I worry that Warren can’t seem to learn this modality.
Luckily Harris has the same quality but actually says something. I’d say the same for Buttigieg. Even Biden is more reassuring than Sanders and Warren. So shoot me, it’s kind of a visceral thing, but that’s important in politics.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
She had a good debate relatively speaking. The cheering section helped, but so did the awful format and all the yelling.
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia:
And I know Warren has it in her, because occasionally she slows down and talks in a well-modulated voice, and of course she says lots of good things.
satby
@A Ghost To Most: you were more intrepid than your siblings and good for you.
There’s been a lot of study on the effect of genetics, personality, and political leanings that I find fascinating. How much of what we believe politically is caused by our personality and not the information we’re exposed to? Anyway, it’s going way far off topic. My point was to support Kay’s statement that often the VSP feel that selling a better policy is unnecessary, everyone should just accept that it’s better.
MomSense
@germy:
I think there is scarcity and thatâs why we need to make sure we get good value for our money. Individuals and households cannot continue to spend such a high percentage of their earnings on health care. Our government cannot as well. It isnât sustainable. Returning to the Republican model of emergency departments as the sole primary and catastrophic providers at the highest cost and least efficient for millions of uninsured people is not sustainable. Unregulated insurance companies with high administrative costs isnât sustainable. Fee for service is not sustainable even in a single payer model. We have to deal with the cost of medical education, the scarcity of certain specialists, and the expectation that physicians and not LNPs is ill provide our basic care. This is part of why congress passes the stupid Medicare fix bills every budget cycle to increase the Medicare reimbursement rate for providers.
The regulatory back end of the ACA was moving toward fees for condition with providers following best practices models used by Mayo and Cleveland Clinic. One of my friends was involved in the committee that Sibelius set up. There was a whole plan for phasing the new reimbursement system in so that providers had time to adjust. Of course this went down the toilet along with everything else when trump became president.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay:
Arne Duncan did have access to Obama’s time machine.
satby
@Kay: yes, this. And that was assuming they had the educational base to even succeed in retraining.
A lot of people don’t and that situation is getting worse. Both Indiana and Michigan outsourced public education statewide to the K-12 corporation. To save money on running the brick and mortar schools K-12 encourages people to home school their children using online classrooms. Almost no one I know in Indiana sends their kid to school anymore, and it’s not going to be pretty in about 10 years because a majority of these kids will have been educated to work at Wal-Mart and McDonald’s.
Another Scott
@Kay: As the economy changes, people have to be able to get jobs in the new economy. People have to be able to retrain. Buggy whip makers learned to run machines at Ford. But there’s retraining, and there’s retraining.
The problem over the last 40 years or so, as I see it, is that (for example) people in Dayton working at $65/hr jobs at GM or NCR or Frigidaire (wages, overtime, good benefits) can’t (as you say) survive on new $10/hr jobs. Retraining for a $10/hr job isn’t going to work for them – not only because they can’t afford to have $0 income while working on an associate’s degree at the local community college, but because the wage at the end of the tunnel is too low.
The only overall solution to problems like these is government action. Either tariffs at the border (so that GM won’t feel that it’s a no-brainer to manufacture cars half-way around the world to import into the US), and/or a substantially higher minimum wage, and/or substantially revised early retirement rules (“if your company eliminates your job and you have paid into SS for 15 years, then you can retire early with xx% of the age 62 benefit”), etc.. Just “retraining uber alles” doesn’t solve the problem. It’s a systemic problem and simply creating lower-paid 40-60 year old workers with AA degrees isn’t solving it.
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: We are in agreement. This is what I wrote in the dead thread
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat:
She and BS are dragging the group to the left and that’s not helping us. The focus needs to be on stopping fascism.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat:
Who is your favorite candidate?
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: I am biased in favor of Warren, so maybe it’s that, but I didn’t hear this “shouting” a couple of y’all are complaining about here. Every candidate pitched his or her voice at different levels to speak over moderators or other folks on the stage when interrupted, including Williamson, who if she was “shouting,” was shouting nonsense.
rikyrah
@Quinerly:
Morning to Poco and the tribe :)
MomSense
@Kay:
Oh god, no. The issue isnât arguing with Republicans. The biggest challenge Democrats have is voting – suppression of Democratic voters, registration efforts, redistricting, SCOTUS imposed limits on VRA, and the actual machines. Perez is the best choice for dealing with voting based on his work with the Civil Rights Division.
The DNC has been giving money to local organizations to do voter registration and GOTV. Itâs a real unsung victory of the 2018 midterms.
@Betty Cracker:
I hate fucking Sanders but Iâm not so sure we have options other than to try to keep those assholes in the fold. I think we still face a very real risk that Sanders runs third party if he doesnât win the Democratic nomination.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: So far Kamala H. I find her reassuring.
. But I think any actual elected D with the exception of Tulsi is better than T.
MomSense
@zhena gogolia:
Yeah, Warren has moved to my 4th choice out of 4 candidates. The rest I donât care for at all – for President.
different-church-lady
@satby: Yes, this a huge problem with democratic/liberal policy makers in general: they think it’s self-evident that the upheaval is going to lead to improvement.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: I’m starting to come round to your point of view on this one.
rikyrah
@Kay:
CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP
What I would pay to hear just ONE Democratic Candidate lay it out like this tonight at the debate.
Absolutely ON POINT!
satby
@MomSense:
He signed the unity pledge, so if he runs third party he breaks faith with some of his current supporters. It won’t be a smart move, and I think he’s smart enough to want to keep the grift going a few more years as the last honest man in DC.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: I don’t think she was shouty that honor goes to BS of Vt. He reminds me of Frank Costanza. What is with those weird hand gestures? NYC has a lot to answer for, between BS and Orange T.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@MomSense:
I don’t think he will, it’s too hard to do it as an independent and I don’t think that Dr. Jill will give up the Green Party line.
Baud
@MomSense:
I agree. He is polling too high for Tom not to appease him. I hate it, but it is what it is.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: Her answers on trade deals were a bit la la land. Although I do agree that labor needs a seat a table.
Baud
I don’t think Sanders will run third party but he also won’t concede or drop out of the primary.
Gin & Tonic
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It’s too hard *for Wilmer* to do it. It’s difficult, sure, but it’s way more difficult if you’re somebody who has spent three decades or so in Congress and accomplished precisely nothing. The level of organizational skill required to keep track of 50 sets of deadlines and ballot requirements is far, far beyond anything BS has shown in his life.
rikyrah
@Kay:
You were the first one who got me to see that this bills were PREGNANCY BILLS. Before you, I hadn’t thought of it in those terms, and I wish those on our side would frame it that way. Bring it down to the weeds.
PST
@Kay:
I think that whole post really hits the mark. It could be expanded into a good Op-Ed piece. I see myself in that characterization, unfortunately. The economics and history courses I took in the 70s led me to easily accept free trade as a win-win and its opponents as narrow minded tariff-mongers, mostly of the capitalist variety, sacrificing the common good to protect their monopoly markets. It was easy to be smug about knowing better but hard to explain it all to your old pals back home in Ohio â very hard indeed, since it isnât true that free trade is always win-win.
schrodingers_cat
@schrodingers_cat: * the table.
schrodingers_cat
@PST: Free trade is good but the way it is currently structured is that it favors capital and not labor. If unions were stronger, workers would have a seat at the table and be able to negotiate better deals.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: He is a sore loser. That’s the model Orange T had in mind if he had lost the race to HRC.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: I’m there now. Now, granted, it was partly by choice – as in, I chose to live city life behind, I chose to move to a remote rural area, in some ways I chose poverty, and I have to live with that – but the fact that there are so many out there who *didn’t* choose it, and have nothing but lies, bullshit, and hating “Demonrats” to depend on – kind of kills me. I am sympathetic to the plight of the penniless, because I’m one of them – but only up to the point where I realize, “they’d rather die than admit that they might be wrong about the real causes of their economic anxiety.” Then I think, in efg’s immortal phrase, “fuckem.”
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
Agreed. I donât think she has a good record on trade at all.
Chris Johnson
@Baud: Ya know when I say the NYT literally is run from Russia and working for them, not us, it is not meant as snark or sarcasm. I mean ‘Mitch McConnell’ levels of, literally being run by an enemy power. Continue to watch what the NYT does and see if they in any way suggest otherwise.
Haroldo
@Another Scott:
An associated, and to my mind’s eye a larger one, problem is nobody can survive on $10 / hr.
@different-church-lady:
Upheaval is coming, ready or not. It’s the timescale that might be debatable.
Yarrow
Claire McCaskill on the Today Show just said one thing the debate made clear last nigh was that Medicare for All meant no more health insurance at work and that you can’t take away people’s choices.
How many people who have health insurance at work actually have choices? Maybe a choice between a high deductible and lower premium plan and a more expensive plan, but that’s not much of a choice. What choices do people actually get? Once you’re in the plan your “choices” are limited to in-network doctors the plan has contracts with unless you go out of network. Not all plans cover out of network. She’s making it sound like you get to choose whatever doctor you want on your fabulous work health insurance plan and you get assigned a doctor and have no choice with anything else. That’s bullshit.
The people who make our health care decisions for us do not seem like they’ve ever had to live with work-offered health insurance and there’s no choice because it’s that plan or nothing.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Break it down for us, Kay.
Tell it!
Yarrow
@zhena gogolia:
Agreed.
Searcher
@Another Scott:
Also, we need more massive government projects, spending.
If we had projects to provide free daycare, build a train track down the middle of every interstate, provide free addiction services, put solar on every viable scrap of govt land, etc, the extra demand for labor would help provide options for people whose jobs went away.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: Well, that’s pretty close to Warren’s position — she’s saying workers and environmental interests should have a seat at the table along with corporations. I’m no expert on trade, so I don’t know how realistic her plan to hold other countries to higher standards would work out. But given that the US is a huge market, it seems logical that we could use the leverage that gives us to improve things for workers and the environment, not just in the US but around the world, if we made that a priority.
rikyrah
@germy:
He opened his Presidential Campaign in PHILADELPHIA, MISSISSIPPI…Whose only claim to fame is the MURDER OF THREE CIVIL RIGHTS WORKERS.
germy
@rikyrah: Yes, that’s one of the reasons I wasn’t surprised when I heard the recording.
And remember, he was quick to embrace gun control when the Black Panthers armed themselves.
I’m glad this tape came out. Anything to tarnish the Legend of Saint Ronnie.
Searcher
@Another Scott:
Again, depending on what your goals in “breaking up Google are”, not actually a problem.
Post-breakup, the Ads company buys ad space from the YouTube and Google/Search companies, who buy data center space from Cloud. Apps sells its suite to businesses and maybe cuts back on its freemium offering. In other words, nothing actually changes except you have different people in charge of each chunk. Well, maybe Android is in trouble.
It’s hip to say “Google is an ad company”, but the ad space on Google will still be profitable enough to support itself even if the Ads unit is a separate company.
germy
I’m so old I remember job hunting in the 1970s (reading the newspaper “help wanted” section) and ad after ad said NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY – WILL TRAIN.
In the 2000s, I worked with lots of guys in their 60s with corner offices and good-paying managerial positions. Several of them admitted to me they started with the company in the late 1970s as file clerks or clerk typists, and then were trained, moved up.
I don’t see that happening anymore. One more thing the greedy companies outsourced. They outsourced it to potential employees, they outsourced it to the government. And so we all sit here wringing our hands, lamenting “How will we retrain all these people??”
Chris Johnson
@Yarrow: Not agreed, not at all.
I’m not hearing ‘shouty Warren’ nearly so much as the old standby ‘shouty Sanders’, but I see one key fact: when Warren drops those emphatic lines that people want to interpret as ‘shouty’, the crowd goes nuts with cheering. That’s what turned Warren-Delaney into a meme. Delaney was taking the Republican side (or N-word, for the N that starts as ‘neo’âŠ) and Warren just smacked him down with a take that speaks to people’s lived reality.
It became a takedown meme because the crowd went nuts cheering, not because it was a logical argument. Trump would not have ‘won’ if he wasn’t the kind of guy constantly going for those ‘crowd went nuts’ lines. Sanders could not have got as far as he did last time, if not for those kinds of lines, those ‘aha’ moments where the politician is suddenly telling the truth just the way you wish you could. And the crowd goes wild.
I’d like to see Kamala Harris also doing that, and see it become a blowout and we’ll essentially pick between Warren and Harris. It’s important what kinds of things the crowd goes nuts for. Trump crowds go (yeah, I know, looong trip) nuts for hurting immigrants. With that it’s like the Adlai Stevenson line, he has the vote of all thinking people but that’s not enough, he needs to win an election.
You can staff ICE, or hire many policemen, out of the ‘psycho hate man’ contingent, and that crowd goes nuts, and you can even cheat like mad and then pretend you won but you cannot win an election on that demographic. There are not enough of them.
You absolutely can win a blowout election from the people who go bonkers with cheering when Warren says the things she does. Those people are called the electorate. You could also call ’em the proletariat if you wanted to really put noses out of joint. Until literal dollars are directly given the vote, you still have to get actual people to vote and work for you by saying that you will do what’s needed, without equivocating or giving up ahead of time.
With luck and some effort you end up with a revolution that does NOT involve lining up the aristocrats and killing them. Because when it is so unthinkable to displease the ruling class and there is no other choice and people just have to get realistic that they are outplayed and outmaneuvered and need to just go off and die because the system is perpetually lost, the other alternative is to basically smash everything. And we SO don’t have to go there, as the electorate is solidly behind saving their own lives, and we’ve got lots of people who can help do that.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Yes the US is a big market, but that we could get everyone to toe the line if we just snapped our fingers is wishful thinking. Also after T and his whole scale retreat from treaties and agreements which country would want to take the risk, especially if its going to cost them domestically
@rikyrah: Many of our present woes can be traced back to him.
satby
@germy: the tape doesn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know. The more damaging meme is going around FB now, that St. Ronnie was the one who dropped the tax rates too low and to make up for it started taxing SS. A lot of his idiot followers didn’t know that, they were too young then but have started to collect SS now.
glory b
@Kay: “The truth is if you want to be financially secure in a working class or lower middle class job you need to consistently bring in X by the time youâre 30 years old and keep doing that each and every year until youâre at least 60. They have very little room for error. They donât have the luxury of exploring a new option in âcodingâ or âmedical assistingâ or whatever the fuck. This whole discussion is based on the options upper middle class people have.”
This is what I think of when they talk about doing away with the health insurance industry. I’m in Pittsburgh, there are A LOT of people working in those office/cubicle jobs here. A lot of them are my inner city neighbors, young and middle aged African Americans who have high school or lees than a bachelors degree.
They make maybe $15 to $18 an hour to start, which is pretty decent for them, the cost of living here is fairly low.
What will happen to all of those unemployed people if the health insurance industry goes away? They probably won’t vote for the upheaval, as satby called it.
rikyrah
@Kay:
You are right. No room for error.
glory b
@rikyrah: I know, right? I was pretty young, but my parents made sure I knew my civil rights history. I was patiently waiting for the MSM to call him out on it, but it never happened.
Thus began my feelings of cynicism.
rikyrah
@satby:
He’s too phucking lazy, cause running third party takes work and organization.
Wilmer prefers to leech off of other already built organizations.
satby
@rikyrah: that was MomSense, not me. I don’t think he’ll go third party either. You’re correct, he’s lazy and he’s got a good con game going on as the last uncorrupted man in Washington. He’ll squeeze his followers as long as he can, but a third party run would disenchantment a good number of them.
rikyrah
@glory b:
I think about these folks too.
There are 2 MILLION people employed by the health insurance industry. Folks gotta think about that. Can’t be so flip about eliminating the health insurance companies.
satby
@glory b: a lot of them could be absorbed into the expanded infrastructure needed to insure every American, especially if it’s an expansion that allows for some private insurance, like most countries have. And don’t forget, a lot of corporate jobs are temp and gig economy jobs, so they’re not as secure as they seem.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: Yep. The potential job loss of all those people who work in the health insurance industry is just hand-waved away. Those companies are big employers and those people will lose jobs.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Dowd lives in a fancy house in Georgetown (I saw it on a CSPAN live broadcast of one of her book parties* years ago) in Georgetown, and if she’s not quoted and cited as much as she was in the Bush years, she’s still rich and respected and occupies prime professional real estate. The way she spent the Obama years sneering at Obama– as Charlie Pierce put it, “pink-washing” Barry/Bambi, echoing rightwing talking points about teleprompters and golf (he’s lazy and dumb)– goes curiously unremarked, but maybe not so curiously since, as I said, she’s not much remarked in recent years. The whole Pelosi thing was the first time I remember her getting a lot of attention since her (thoroughly dishonest and unprofessional) stunt with the edibles in Colorado, and before that…? But you could see why she would still look like a goal to young comers in her industry. Who doesn’t want a nice house and fat paycheck? and I’m told many people enjoy this whole “socializing” thing.
* it was quite a spectacle, Tim Russert, Tweety and MoDo doing that ‘we’re still just working-class Irish Catholic kids’ thing, obsessing over whether or not Monsignor O’Whatever had arrived yet, MoDo’s oldest brother, who seemed to be in the early stages of dementia and whom she treated like a precocious child, if not a well-trained pet, telling everyone who would listen that when he was a Senate page everybody knew Kennedy was a dick and Nixon was a swell guy, the surprisingly tall Cal Thomas’s head seemingl to float disembodied around the edges of the room, behind the shorter people in the foreground.
Yarrow
@Betty Cracker:
I thought Warren was shouting and I like her so it’s not that i’m predisposed against her. I thought most of them were shouting to a greater or lesser extent. Mayor Pete stood out to me for being calm in comparison. I like Kamala Harris for that same reason–to me it never seems like she’s shouting at me.
Wilmer for certain is the worst shouter. I kept turning down the volume when he talked. Combined with the finger-wagging, his whole presentation was off-putting.
rikyrah
Megan McIntyre (@RCMeg) Tweeted:
Just so weâre suuuuuper clear: Marianne Williamson is a charlatan whose work has actively harmed LGBTQ+ people, fat people, people with mental illnesses, people with physical illness, people with eating disorders, and mothers. She is fatphobic and anti-vaxx. #DemDebate https://twitter.com/RCMeg/status/1156393127466262530?s=17
Mandalay
@Another Scott:
As virtue signaling goes, your comment is about as meaningless and pathetic as it gets.
What brand of car do you own?
What media do you read?
What web sites do you visit?
What brand of gas do you buy?
Where do you buy your groceries?
Where do you buy your clothes?
Which search engine do you use?
What stock do you own?
Who do you buy from online?
Who owns your email account?
I suspect you’re not quite as holy and superior as you pretend.
Yarrow
@rikyrah: If Williamson qualifies for the next debate someone needs to come at her about her lack of experience in politics. Compare her to Trump and say things like, “Look where hiring someone without experience got us.”
Another Scott
@germy: Yup.
And companies trained people, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because there was a business case for it – namely, if they didn’t train people they wouldn’t get the work done.
But the world has changed, with a lot of help from government policies. Like weakening unions, weakening the ability of people to move to better jobs (wages too low, benefits not transferrable, etc.) and tax policies that rewarded capital over labor.
We know how to fix these problems, but it will take time. And many of the winners over the last 40 years will have to pay more so they’ll fight it like mad.
I’m reminded of one of Dean Baker’s hobby horses – managers and MBAs and medical specialists are all for chasing lower cost labor for production and supply chains, but they fight like Hell to prevent imported lawyers and doctors and white collar jobs that might threaten their own status and pay. “Competition for thee but not for me.”
The US doesn’t have to be in a race to the bottom, but that’s what too much of the economy has been in for far too long… I’m not advocating hard protectionism, but I am advocating that the benefits of competition be much more widely shared (higher taxes at the top, better benefits and higher wages at the bottom).
Cheers,
Scott.
satby
@Yarrow: the view from my millennial nieces and nephews, former devoted Wilmerites, is that Mayor Pete was their new hero. That’s such a drastic improvement for a lot of reasons, starting with the fact he’s got workable policy proposals not slogans, and that he’s a team player who boosts the Democratic party as much as himself. He’ll be a loyal and effective surrogate for the eventual nominee, and he’ll move more kids into the firmly Democratic camp. This sparks joy.
satby
@Another Scott: I ? this comment.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mandalay: that was a very odd little outburst, even considering the source
Gin & Tonic
So Germany’s Foreign Minister visits Poland and is asked about the decision (pushed by him) to restore Russia’s membership in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, in light of the police-state tactics of this past weekend, as front-paged by Adam and mentioned several times by Gogol’s wife. Unsurprisingly, he whiffs, badly (article in Polish.) Points out, apparently un-ironically, that Russia has committed to upholding civil rights for its citizens.
Lat’s ask Alexei Navalny about that. Better, let’s ask Boris Nemtsov.
lurker dean
just got a message from gofundme that scotian passed last night :( rest in peace, scotian, and condolences to the family.
Nelle
Has this been covered already? I’ve been away from all threads and just got a notice from GoFundMe that Scotian died last night.
Gin & Tonic
@lurker dean: Oh, man. Quick, and very sad.
RIP.
Baud
@lurker dean:
Aw, man. So fast. RIP.
Mandalay
@Kay:
I am a software developer, and being a coder is not the future for machinists, even if they have the talent and drive to succeed. I saw an ad the other day from a fairly well known company advertising a programming vacancy. The good news was they were looking for someone to work remotely (i.e. work from home). The bad news was that the salary offered was $25,000 to $60,000, which is roughly half the the going rate.
They are obviously looking for very talented programmers who can work from overseas. They can pay them half the going rate, not have to worry about those icky visa and benefits issues, and drop them like a hot potato whenever it suits them without any repercussions.
Talented American software developers will still succeed, but I suspect the days of programmers of average ability making a living in the USA are numbered. And if it ever was a reality for a machinist to become a software developer (which I doubt), it’s far less likely now.
ixnay
@lurker dean: So sad to hear about Scotian. There are apparently still costs to be covered, so any further help will no doubt be appreciated. Hoping for peace for Scotian, and for the entire family.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yarrow:
And here I thought I was more or less alone in the BJ “What the fuck is Warren doing?” caucus. I was pleasantly surprised to see Krugman has come out against Warren’s Single-Payer or Bust stance
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She does not seem to have the best political instincts.
schrodingers_cat
@lurker dean: May he rest in peace. I will miss his thoughtful comments.
rikyrah
@lurker dean:
RIP :(
So damn fast.
Phuck cancer :(
HRA
@lurker dean:
My sincere condolences to his family and friends.
Citizen Alan
@germy:
It won’t tarnish his legend among Republicans. They knew what he was and were happy to vote for him because he was skilled at saying what they truly believed in their hearts but couldn’t articulate without being shunned by decent people.
SiubhanDuinne
@lurker dean:
Oh, what sad (though not unexpected) news. May he rest in the peace that eluded him in recent months. Condolences to his Siobhan, family, and legions of friends.
Baud
@Citizen Alan:
Right. More like burnish than tarnish.
satby
@lurker dean: oh how sad! I’m comforted a tiny bit that we were able to ease his worry a little bit in his last days. And he knew we valued him. But what a shitty hand he got dealt ?
Elizabelle
RIP Scotian. Not a surprise, but a shame. He showed such strength in the face of his illness.
Amazing that he was able to be with us, commenting, up to 3-4 days before he left this world.
Quinerly
@lurker dean: oh no.
glory b
@lurker dean: Oh no, condolences and prayers to his friends and family.
Quinerly
@rikyrah: late back to the thread. Right back at you!
zhena gogolia
Deleting my comment which was about Boris Nemtsov, but it’s not appropriate now that i’ve read the rest of the thread.
zhena gogolia
@lurker dean:
I’m really sorry.
The Gofundme is still up so people can donate in his memory.
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne:
I had a bad feeling when he didn’t comment yesterday, and was struggling the day before.
zhena gogolia
@Elizabelle:
I believe he was here the day before yesterday.
zhena gogolia
Scotian:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/scotian-david-c-macdonald-death-fund?viewupdates=1&rcid=r01-156458394164-2d35a98a022b4390&utm_medium=email&utm_source=customer&utm_campaign=p_email%2B1137-update-supporters-v5b
J R in WV
@A Ghost To Most:
While you aren’t all wrong… it’s way more complicated than that. Mostly these are folks who have lived in the area where their ancestors settled down a very long time ago, pre-civil war in many cases.
What they want is a way to make a good living right where they live now. That’s not an extreme requirement.
J R in WV
@satby:
The thing that really pisses me off about putting work out to contract in every way is that it just lessens the income of the workers by peeling off income for that third party contract business. Whether it’s contract software work, with an Indian company taking 35% of the hourly wage paid to those code monkeys, school systems built on contracts with profits squeezed out of public education dollars, or hiring a company to install guard rails alongside highways instead of having DOT employees do that work.
Profit for private businessmen who kick back to politicians stolen from the pockets of working men and women. That money belongs to the workers, the teachers, not to managers who add nothing to the process. Not to Republican stooges!!
Butter Emails!!!
@J R in WV:
Don’t look now, but apparently it’s really, really necessary that insurers be allowed to continue gobbling up billions of dollars in health care dollars because reasons.